This muscle is underrated for speed

In today's article I'm going to talk about an underrated muscle for speed.

The Psoas Major, also known as " hip flexors". Now lets look science about how important this muscle that which may change how you look at it.

There are different ways to train this muscle which I will discuss briefly.

#1 What is the Psoas Major?

Location: The Psoas Major is a long muscle located deep within the abdomen. It is also referred to as the "iliopsoas" because it consist of two muscles, the Psoas Major and the Iliacus, which work together.

Function of the muscle: The Psoas Major plays a crucial role in hip flexion. It is responsible for lifting the thigh towards the Torso, allowing activities' like sprinting, running, climbing stairs etc.

Posture: This muscle is essential for maintaining good posture. A strong and well-balanced Psoas Major can help prevent lower back pain and anterior pelvic tilt.

Core Stabilization: The Psoas Major is considered part of the body's core muscle. It helps stabilize the spine and pelvis during movements and activities.

#2 Science on Psoas Major in speed

After looking the basics of what the Psoas Major, now its very easy to see how it can affect an athlete's speed.

A week psoas will struggle to lift the knee fast for multiple repetitions. A tight psoas will mess up an athlete's posture and sprint technique.

One research paper analyzed the size of different muscles between high school boys vs girls and high school athletes vs non-athletes. Out of all the muscles they studied, including the thigh muscles, they found that there was the biggest difference in the psoas major with male athletes having significantly larger hip flexors.

In a french documentary, they analazed the psoas major of Olympic 100m Gold Medalist Asafa Powell. When they compared it alongside another sprinter, Asafa Powell's hip flexors were nearly Twice the size of the other sprinters. There is also research that shows during sprint the hip flexor has the highest muscle activity when it is recovering the swinging leg.

Now based on these all researches it is suggested that the hip flexors is larger in faster, more powerful athletes, with better stride frequency. I'm not saying we should try to grow our psoas major to catch up with Asafa Powell but I believe that this muscle group in not trained enough in India.

#3 Points to keep in before training Psoas Major

Keep in mind that you don't want to overdo it because if you're doing a lot of speed work , that is already exhausting your hip flexors, so when you are far from competition you can do higher amount of hip flexors training.

Google Sites

Report abuse